Woman Testifies on Fear Raised by Memory of Abuse

An Irvine woman who says she “recovered” buried memories of childhood sexual abuse by her father said Wednesday that she was confused and terrified by the recollections and desperately hoped they were not true.

But the memories--fuzzy and incomplete at first--kept coming, and Holly Ramona said she ultimately became convinced that her father, a Napa Valley winery executive, had raped her when she was a child.

“I didn’t want to believe them,” Ramona, 23, told a Napa County Superior Court jury. “I didn’t think in my mind that my father, who was supposed to love me, could do this to me.”

But “I wouldn’t be here if there was a question in my mind,” she said. “My father molested me.”

The testimony was the emotional peak of a landmark malpractice case involving “recovered memory” therapy, a controversial practice that has divided the mental health profession and become a juicy talk show staple since it surfaced in the late 1980s.

Holly Ramona’s father says that his daughter’s therapist and a consulting psychiatrist took a depressed girl seeking help with an eating disorder and planted false memories of abuse in her mind.

Gary Ramona, 50, lost his family, his reputation and his $400,000-a-year job at Robert Mondavi Winery after his daughter accused him in 1990. He is seeking $8 million in damages.

The lawsuit has attracted nationwide attention because it marks the first time a court has allowed a non-patient to sue a therapist for malpractice. Psychologists fear that a victory by Gary Ramona would trigger a flood of similar suits and interfere with their relationships with patients.

Wednesday marked Holly Ramona’s first appearance in the month-old trial, and her testimony kept the packed chambers riveted for hours. Poised despite the presence of her father directly across the room, she calmly described how she had always feared her father, but had no memories of sexual abuse until she left home to attend college at UC Irvine.

Answering charges at issue in the lawsuit, Holly Ramona testified that neither her former therapist, Marche Isabella, nor psychiatrist Richard Rose helped her manufacture any memories. Western Medical Center of Anaheim, where she was treated, is the third defendant in the case.

According to her testimony, the memories were triggered by an episode during her college Christmas break in 1989. While sitting in the family room of the Ramonas’ Napa Valley home, she said, her father gave her a “long, steady gaze” that seemed inappropriate.

“It was not a look a father would normally give his daughter,” she testified.

Soon after, she said, during a drive to Palm Springs with her mother and grandmother, the first of many fragmented memories surfaced: an image of her father’s hand on her stomach.

Two months later, more memories crept out. In one, Holly Ramona said, her father was on top of her, recalling that “he was heavy, I could feel his skin and smell him.” In another, she was in her childhood bunk bed and her father was sitting beside her, stroking the inside of her thighs.

In another, “I was on a bed, there was a lot of light and a white sheet. My father was on top of me. His penis was inside me.”

During their four weeks of testimony, Gary Ramona’s expert witnesses sought to convince jurors that the therapists who treated his daughter were careless and irresponsible and preyed on her suggestibility. They also contended that Rose used a session with the hypnotic drug sodium amytal to prove to the college woman that her mental images were real.

Holly Ramona rebutted those suggestions Wednesday, insisting that there was no attempt to influence her. Indeed, when she wanted to confront her father soon after her first memory surfaced, Isabella recommended “that I hold off,” she testified.

The day’s most poignant moment came under cross-examination, when Gary Ramona’s attorney, Richard Harrington, asked Holly Ramona to recall a Father’s Day card she had sent her father from college. The card closed with “You’re great, Love, Holly” and Harrington asked the witness to reconcile those words with her testimony that merely hugging her father had made her uncomfortable.

“There are times now when I would give anything to have a hug from my father, a normal father-daughter hug,” Holly Ramona said, her voice cracking with emotion. “But I was afraid (then) that he would take it the wrong way.”

Spotting her tears, the judge ordered a break, and Gary Ramona--his normally blank face a contortion--rushed from the courtroom.

One of Holly Ramona’s two sisters is expected to testify next.